The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Elbridge Colby, President Trump’s “lightning rod” pick to serve as the Pentagon’s under secretary for policy, despite the private concerns of several Republican senators about Colby’s past statements and views.
The chamber voted 54-45 to confirm the nominee, who will hold the No. 3-ranking job at the Pentagon and be in charge of briefing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on all defense policy matters.
Notably, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), an outspoken advocate for projecting American military strength throughout the world and supporting NATO allies, voted against Colby.
McConnell voiced concern about what he called Colby’s desire to prioritize U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific over those in Europe, Ukraine and the Middle East.
“Abandoning Ukraine and Europe and downplaying the Middle East to prioritize the Indo-Pacific is not a clever geopolitical chess move. It is geostrategic self-harm that emboldens our adversaries and drives wedges between America and our allies for them to exploit,” he said in a statement explaining his vote.
McConnell had voted to advance Colby by voting for a procedural motion Monday afternoon, as he has voted to advance other controversial Trump nominees before later opposing them on the final confirmation vote.
Several Democrats voted for the nominee, including Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), swing-state moderates who sit on the Armed Services panel.
The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced Colby’s nomination last week in a closed-door vote.
Colby received a boost at his confirmation hearing from Vice President Vance, who called “Bridge” a friend when he introduced him to the Armed Services panel.
Republican senators grilled the nominee last month over his past statements about the strategic importance of projecting military power into Europe and the Middle East. They also questioned him about his views on whether the U.S. should fully commit to the defense of Taiwan.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a member of the Armed Services panel, warned Colby that his previously stated view that that United States should tolerate and attempt to contain a nuclear-armed Iran was contrary to Trump’s policy.
Colby pledged he would provide the president with “credible and realistic” military options to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear arms.
Several Republican senators had “serious concerns” about Colby’s nomination, a source familiar with the vetting process told The Hill.
The Wall Street Journal in a March 3 editorial called Colby “a lightning rod in the fight between the GOP’s peace-through-strength wing and its retreat-from-the-world faction.”
The Journal described him as the “intellectual front man for a wing of the political right that argues the U.S. should retreat from commitments in Europe and the Middle East.”
Colby told Freddy Gray, the host of The Spectator’s “Americano” podcast, last year that the United States should reduce its support of Ukraine and Europe to focus on the threat posed by China to Taiwan.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations raised “serious concerns” about Colby’s views of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
The group questioned Colby’s views of former President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and his remarks to conservative media host Tucker Carlson’s that a military strike to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon lacked “a clear connection to American interests.”
Colby performed well at his confirmation hearing last month by offering nimble responses to senators’ questions and making efforts to settle their concerns.
He assured Cotton, a leading defense hawk, that he thinks Taiwan is “very important” to the United States.
He also told Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) that he views NATO as an important alliance, even though he believes it has to “adapt.”
Colby distanced himself from two controversial Trump administration officials, Michael DiMino, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, and Andrew Byers, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia.
He told Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) that he did not choose DiMino for the job and asserted that DiMino’s views did not reflect Trump’s policy in the Middle East.
DiMino has alarmed pro-Israel advocates by arguing that the United States doesn’t face a vital or existential threats in the region.
And Colby told Wicker that he did not share Byers’s view that thinking about China through the lens of deterrence is wrong.
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